Joji Sakurai

Joji Sakurai is a journalist and commentator published in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, YaleGlobal, International New York Times and other publications. As a veteran Associated Press foreign correspondent and features editor, Joji worked on major business and politics news stories in four continents including the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy; the Indian Ocean tsunami; the Greek debt crisis; Japan’s tsunami and nuclear meltdown; the historic papal transition to elect Pope Francis; the Brazil World Cup; Russia’s war with Ukraine; terror strikes in Britain and France; the Congo conflict and North Korea’s nuclear brinksmanship. He has edited ground-breaking investigations into Nazis in the United States, nuclear smuggling, Central Asian forced sterilisations, Russian Olympic corruption and much else. Joji is an avid long-distance runner with four marathons under his belt. He writes travels stories for Momentum.travel and the New York Times, and as a “gastronaut” roams far and wide in search of unusual and sometimes bizarre things to eat. He graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford with a First in Modern Languages and tends to be based either in Japan or Slovenia’s Adriatic Coast.

Vaishali Neotia is CEO of Merxius, an Indian virtual reality startup. Ashwini Asokan leads an AI and computer vision firm called Mad Street Den. Nivruti Rai – whose parents received messages of sympathy because she was not a boy and neither were her two older sisters – is today head of Intel India.

New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong is always a spectacular affair with fireworks lighting up Victoria Harbour. This year, there will be investment pyrotechnics to cheer too: an overhaul in market listing rules has sparked an extraordinary run of initial public offerings and put Hong Kong on course to finish 2018 as the world’s biggest IPO market.

Shadowfax is an Indian startup named after a horse in the Lord of the Rings that possesses fabulous speed. For India’s galloping economy – projected to surge 7.5 per cent this fiscal year – the Bengaluru-based company is a leading player in an explosive growth sector: logistics.

From the western tip of Sumatra to the eastern island of Sulawesi, the green motorbikes criss-cross cities over Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago. Go-Jek, the first tech unicorn in a nation of 260 million, has transformed Indonesian life with its motorbike ride-hailing and delivery services. It represents freedom for millions of Indonesians in a country with poor

In a recent ranking of the most cited artificial intelligence research papers, which was studded with the likes of MIT and Google, a perhaps surprising name stood out: Nanyang Technological University. In fact, the Singapore university ranked second in the top ten only to Microsoft. The Southeast Asian island is proving a popular AI base:

Ele.me is an online food delivery startup launched by two friends at Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University that recently won $1 billion in venture capital funding. Its name roughly translates as “Hungry Now?”

It’s known as the “Little Red Dot” in a sea of gigantic countries. But Singapore suddenly has a shot at becoming the world’s leading financial centre – as Brexit threatens to deprive London of the mantle.